Feeling misplaced in the world is nothing new especially as a transracial-transnational adoptee. Having been abandoned by my birth mother the day after I was born, I was given a set of standards of how I would position myself in social settings. Far from the maddening crowd, I was always on the sidelines watching in, slipping in and out of the shadows, feeling no one would have noticed if I’d never been born in the first place.

My adopted mother took those standards to the next level by giving me a camera when I was only seven. I had always thought my photographic talents came about from some creative osmosis, as she is an artist and my father is an architect. Only recently did I realize it was because I am an only child of an overly protective mother. She feared that her shy child would never make any friends, but it has done quite the opposite.

Photographing people through a hidden face is as intimate as I allow myself to get to complete strangers. My camera has and always will be my security blanket, but it is also an unhealthy addiction. Having no solid memories from my infancy to mid childhood, my present is obstructed with this habitual obsession with capturing the moment instead of living in it. It is unfortunate that I didn’t exploit my growing passion as a photojournalistic linguist until my college years. I missed out on documenting all my global nomad adventures as a child.

“Misplaced Baggage” is the original title to my foto series of a Việt Namese adoptee’s return journey to her birth country for the first time since her adoption. I found the inventive metaphor truly fitting, as all of us have baggage in our lives. Growing up adopted, I have always had this feeling of being misplaced and displaced. To this day, I continue to live out of unpacked boxes.

It’s an honor to share this space with Sume Williams and Kevin Minh Allen, two very amazing fellow Việt Namese adoptees. I look forward to creating some fabulous masterpieces in this medium and hope that if anything, you the reader, come away with something to think about.

Born outside Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, Anh Ðào Kolbe came to the United States via New York City in 1972. She left two years later and grew up with her Greek and German parents in the Middle Eastern countries of Qatar and Oman, spending a good part of her childhood schooled in the British system. She came back to this country via Boston for college, but didn’t exploit her starving artist talents until after graduation. At the beginning of 2003, she returned to her motherland for the first time since her adoption almost thirty years ago and backpacked solo for two months around the beautiful country with camera in hand. For a sample of her portfolio, go to www.adkfoto.com.